Tips to regain intimacy after having a baby

It’s very normal to feel unsexy and undesirable after having a baby, not to mention being unmotivated or too exhausted to invite intimacy with your other half.

Your body has been through immense change, your hormones are likely to be unsettled for a while after birth and the presence of a tiny little person sleeping, crying or pooing in the nearby vicinity is a massive passion killer.

But that doesn’t mean you’ll never have sex again! Psychosexual and Relationships Therapist, Kate Moyle, has these top tips for feeling sexy again after having a baby, as well as ways to rekindle a little passion with your partner if sex has fallen by the wayside.

Take it slow

Baby steps back into sexual experiences can be really helpful for re-establishing a couple’s sexual and intimate contact. We can often experience what’s called touch fatigue, if we have a young baby or small children, and it can feel a bit like we are being grabbed at a lot.

Try and separate adult to adult touch, from child to adult touch. Acknowledge that this touch is part of a different relationship, of which physical touch and intimacy is mutual.

Start by spending time together focusing on eye-contact, kissing, and skin on skin contact with no agenda other than to relax with each other psychologically and physically again, without intercourse even being on the agenda. ️

Your six week check as a guideline

Your 6 week check from your, GP when they give you the go ahead to have sex again, is a rough guideline and not an instruction. It’s important you feel both psychologically and physically ready.

The impact of breastfeeding on intercourse

It’s important to know that breastfeeding can cause vaginal dryness due to lower oestrogen levels in the body, and that this can cause friction, making penetration more painful, so lubricant can be a useful and pleasurable tool to reduce this.

Also, if we are feeling really tense or anxious, it means that we can physically tense, making intercourse more painful if the pelvic floor is not relaxed.️

Open up your definition of sex

So much of what we are taught about sex is focused on intercourse and penetration, but what this does is exclude people who don’t want to, or can’t have this type of sexual experience.

For women, the highest density of nerve endings is in the clitoris (around 8000) and clitoral stimulation is the most common way that women achieve orgasm. Don’t exclude all types of sex just because one type isn’t currently available to you.

Communicate

Your partner is likely to be feeling anxious about starting a sexual relationship again too, and may feel nervous about hurting you. So if you are able to talk it out, it stops you both jumping to the wrong assumptions which may cause unnecessary friction in your relationship. ️